I rode my bike to New Jersey to eat at Chili’s, which I realize is a pretty glorious self-own.

It turns out there are only two Chili’s locations inside New York City’s five boroughs — one pretty far into Queens, and one on Staten Island, presumably overrun with wild turkeys. Getting to a New Jersey location made for an easier bike ride — a surprisingly quick and indisputably pleasant one, no less — and included a ferry trip, which is novel.

Important background information

Sandwich of the Week aims to cater to a national audience, yet six of the last eight sandwiches discussed here are found only in New York City. I’ve been feeling kind of bad about it, too, but I haven’t had much opportunity to travel lately. So when Chili’s announced — and generated some internet buzz with — I saw and seized the opportunity to examine a sandwich available at over 1,600 locations worldwide.

Chain restaurants don’t come with the hipster cred of chef-owned Lower East Side artisanal locavore grass-fed sandwich shoppes, but I think a big part of the appeal of sandwiches in general is that they’re for the people. And I happen to maintain a soft spot in my heart for Chili’s.

A particularly well-run Chili’s opened next to a brand new multiplex movie theater near my home when I was about 12, and the combination became both a standard for nights out with my parents during my teenage years and a go-to in high school anytime I could find a willing date. Also, the honey mustard that comes with their Chicken Crispers is probably a Top 5 sauce. That stuff rules.

Before this visit, I hadn’t been to a Chili’s in at least five years — maybe a decade. But in my lifetime, Chili’s has undoubtedly provided me more comfort than despair. The same can’t be said for, say, Olive Garden.

I recognized the Boss Burger as a gimmick likely engineered under the assumption that people who write about sandwiches on websites like this one — people like me — would see the absurd pile of meat and want to write about it, and so I realize I’m sort of a sucker for playing their game. Whatever. I was curious.

What it looks like*

(USA TODAY Sports)

*- Astute observers may note that the sandwich photographed above lacks the jalapeno-cheddar smoked sausage that comes on the Boss Burger. I didn’t notice it was missing when I took the picture, but shortly after I did, the waitress arrived at my table with a split sausage on a plate and said, sheepishly, “it comes with sausage, too.” I threw it on top before I bit into the thing.

How it tastes

Meh.

It’s not even that it’s bad. It really just performs as the gimmick it very much is. I was able to get in a few bites of the full meat-stack before the whole thing fell apart into a pinkish meat-pile on the tray, but at no point did all those meats seem in any way necessary. It tastes like a Chili’s burger — fine, familiar — with about a pound of additional, random meat-stuff thrown on top, which, again, is exactly what it is.

But the brisket and rib meat are both notably flavorless, adding only vaguely chewy heft and serving no role whatsoever in enhancing the burger below them. Bacon almost always brings enough salty, smoky flavor to assert itself in sandwiches, but here it was a bit undercooked and not crunchy enough to provide much texture. The barbecue sauce, though visible, did little to add moisture or sweetness or tanginess or anything, really.

The cheese is there. It’s fine. It’s cheese. It’s all just kind of there.

The only real upgrade to this burger over a plain, old-fashioned cheeseburger is the sausage, which was snappy and a little bit spicy and noticeably sausagey. Where no synergy whatsoever existed between the burger and the brisket and rib meat, the inclusion of the sausage undoubtedly made the burger more tasty and more interesting. A Chili’s cheeseburger with one of these jalapeno-cheddar sausages on top would be better than a Chili’s cheeseburger on its own.

The ferry ride back was nice, though. I parked my bike on the front of the boat and sat up on the top deck in the sun, watching the towering downtown skyline glimmer and grow as we drew closer, considering how lucky I am to be able to enjoy such marvels on an ordinary weekday afternoon. Chili’s came through again, really.

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